Spiritual life may initially be focused on self-transformation, but as mindfulness and compassion grow we naturally become attentive to the values of the society around us. When we do so, we can see how the popular promise of happiness through greed and excess consumerism is increasingly shallow and false. Our heart becomes wiser and more contented. Grasping and possessing give way to love and integrity and an innermost desire to live in harmony with all creation. There comes a longing to live more simply for the sake of our own hearts, and a growing sense of responsibility for the life of the earth. But this transformation is not automatic. In every area of life we are invited to mindfully understand our conditioning and habits, and how we can live and love more.

In Ancient Greek the word for awakening is “alethe.” Awakening’s opposite is not evil or ignorance, but “lethe,” sleep. Even after some experience of awakening, we can be asleep to the consequences of our modern way of living. Sadly, interdependence is not explicitly taught in schools or even most traditional spiritual curricula. We have to educate ourselves to see the invisible costs of our actions, until our outer life is in harmony with our heart’s true values.

To be honorable in these times we need to extend a “moral inventory” to our way of life. The Buddhist Eightfold Path includes Right Thought, Right Action, Right Speech, Right Livelihood. Is the way we are living—our work, our home, our finances, our travel, our level of consumption, our political and social participation—in harmony with our understanding of interconnection? In what direction does our care for the earth and our realization of interdependence ask that we move in our life? How might we change, not out of guilt but out of love? We begin our transformation by the very act of asking these questions.